Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Installing Ceiling Fan on Aluminum Wiring

Good evening all,

As a little bit of background, I am a college student and not an expert on anything. My Dad worked as an electrician during high school and college, so much of what I "know" I learned by watching him.

So, here is what I'm up against:

I recently decided to put a ceiling fan in my room in my apartment, without talking to my landlord first, of course. As I was putting it up, I noticed that the wiring was aluminum. Neat, I thought.

The light fixture that was already present was copper, so I went ahead and put up the fan using the existing wire nuts. But, after a while, this starting to gnaw at me, and so I decided to ask...

Is this ok? Was the previous fixture acceptable, given that it was copper to aluminum with no pigtailing or anything other than wire nuts? If I had to guess, I'd say the copper wiring was 16 gauge (I didn't have to strip it, so that is just a guess), so I'm assuming the step down is acceptable?

I also popped off the light switch cover and looked at that, because I previously backwired a copper switch at a friend's house and wanted to make sure my aluminum wiring wasn't back wired here, and it wasn't, but the switch was marked CU and CU CLAD wiring only, and the switch wasn't ground out using the ground screw.

This seemed odd, but I figured I'd ask you guys. Is this acceptable?

If not, should I politely ask my landlord what's going on, or buy our complex's "handyman" a 6-pack and ask him to look over my connections and switches?

If all seems ok, then at worst, I'll probably just ask about the fan and see if I can get someone out to check my wiring, but if all of this seems quite out of the ordinary, or against NEC, then I'm not sure what to do.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forums! The first thing is to not modify a rental unit. You become liable for any damages caused by your modifications. Aluminum to copper connections require special connectors. I would engage your landlord and if he insists, pay for an electrician to come in and rectify the situations for safety's sake. Unless the "handyman" is a licensed electrician, leave him out of the loop.

Chandler,

Thanks for the reply. Didn't consider the liability when installing the fan. Time to put the original fixture up and ask permission to put the fan up.

Will find out what my options are after that, and go from there. I'm sure there will be a 'No' involved somewhere, in which case, someone is getting a new fan for Christmas! :D

I will go with chandler's comment and he right on the target and the apartment is the key word you should not do anything electrical inside that building.

You have to get ahold of your landlord to deal with this and also what more the alum branch circuit is little trickier to deal with it.

{ not all electricians are famuair with combation copper / alum set up }

Some case it will have copper tinned conductor that useally found in much older NM cables { that can confuse someone if not carefull and with copper tinned the conductor insulating materal is rubber then it is good chance you have copper tinned if plastic useally alum conductors that do need specal termation fittings to deal with it.}

Merci,Marc

french,

Thank you for your reply. The insulator appears to be plastic and is stamped Kaiser Aluminum KA-FLEX 10 AL/2.

It was my understanding that if the aluminum wiring was 12 guage or above, it was acceptable with use with all switches, receps and such if they are ALR.

Unfortunately, none of the switches/receps that I looked at were ALR.

Regards.